I spent the first half of my life trying to be an athlete so I could become the second woman after Mary Lou Retton to appear on the front of a Wheaties box. I failed at that, and softball, basketball, volleyball, track, ice skating and cheerleading in the process. Looking back, the only thing amazing about my persistent pursuit of sporting glory was my lack of self-awareness. I only ever made a team after my second time trying out, when I showed up the next year with my much more athletic younger sister. (True story: she played as my proxy on Forbes' softball team one season.) After my closest attempt at sporting success came in a spelling bee (thank you ESPN for televising and giving that sport cred), I finally decided to take the advice of all those coaches who told me I had the brains and benchwarmer's big mouth better suited for sideline competition. Now after studying business at Drexel University and journalism at NYU, I compete for bylines, primarily writing about the business of sports. As for my sporting endeavor, I decided to focus on the one where I only compete with myself: running. I can be seen crossing the finish line of my front door celebrating my first place victory a few mornings a week...then eating a bowl of Wheaties, because "that's what big girls eat."

8/09/2012 @ 10:52AM20,014 views

Shannon Eastin To Become First Female NFL Referee With An Asterisk

When she was a little girl Shannon Eastin wanted to play football. When her mother said no, judo was settled on as a compromise. She went on to earn six national judo championships and along the way, at age 11, became the youngest judo athlete ever accepted to train at the United States Olympic Training Center.

It’s a good thing she learned how to fight. Because now at age 42, Eastin has compromised over football again and is going to have to defend herself.

On Thursday Eastin will become the first female to officiate an NFL game. She will work as a line judge in the preseason match-up between the San Diego Chargers and the Green Bay Packers. It is an historical moment.

The problem is it will need to be marked with an asterisk.

As it stands now, the footnote will explain that Eastin served only as a replacement during an NFL referee lockout caused by a dispute over a new collective bargaining agreement.

The implication is that it took a lockout for a woman to put a crack in the glass ceiling of NFL officiating, and she did so only as a temporary labor scab until the male officials return.

The unfortunate reality is equally offensive. Eastin, whose officiating experience is highlighted by her last four years in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference of the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division 1-AA), is getting this honor at the expense of another more experienced woman.

Thomas, because of her experience, track record and great potential, has been selected by the NFL as a finalist to become an NFL official. That means, by default, she is among the NFL officials currently locked out by the league due to the ongoing dispute over a new collective bargaining agreement between the two sides.

Is there a penalty in football for stepping on your own teammate’s toes? Perhaps unsportswomanlike conduct? If so, throw the flag.

During her conference call with the press on Tuesday, Eastin said she had both positive and negative conversations with current and retired NFL referees over her decision to accept the league’s offer to replacement ref. In the end she decided to focus on the positive, and do what was best for her.

“For me I felt it was something I needed to do,” she said about agreeing to take the game. “I needed to make that step and see what comes my way from there.”

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Is is estimated they will get the typical starting salary of a unioned ref which is around $1500-2000/game. I was told that it could be as little as $500, which could be a financial windfall to some of these replacements who reportedly only have high school officiating experience.

A good opportunity for Shannon Eastin. Bad timing for Sarah Thomas. However, Thomas has a couple things going for her: 1) She is “officially” the first NFL ref. 2) The CBA might be worked out before the reg. season begins, and therefore she still may be the first female to ref a regular season game (i.e. a real game when it actually counts).

Disagree, Paul. Yes it’s an opportunity for Eastin, but it comes at poor timing for her. She hasn’t put in the training or experience to earn the spot and is being used to deflect attention from the men fighting over the CBA. Giving her a first female title to break an on-field gender barrier is a mockery and offensive to women. At this point, the only honor she is worthy of is “first female to be anti-union to ref an NFL game”. If she is still a ref in the NFL after the strike is over, I may agree with you that this was good. But that is really a long shot. She was never in the running to be an official this season due to her lack of experience, and she went ahead and angered the union members who decide who gets to join their club. Not going to lie, there is a tiny part of me that loves that – bucking authority. But she can’t honestly think she was worthy of this. And it’s hard to cheer for a woman who cut every single corner to get to the pinnacle of her career to make headlines for women. By doing so, the bar of excellence by which to judge is lowered to mediocre (at best, given what I’ve seen among the replacements experience). Bad for women, not inspirational or aspirational. Then there is the possibility she may have committed career suicide and we may never hear her name again. I hope not. But when this strike is over it should be Sarah Thomas who gets the regular season first female nod. When that happens a bigger deal should be made about her genuine accomplishment.

Why would the substitute refs care if some of the locked out refs were upset at them? They are fighting against having new people in the NFL referee “club”. This seems like the perfect opportunity to officiate in the NFL for those who would never get the chance otherwise.

Makhaon: I agree with this part of your last sentence — it’s an opportunity for the replacement refs. But I don’t buy that it’s “great” yet. See my above response to Paul Bradley about why I especially don’t think it’s great for Shannon Eastin. I also don’t buy that they “would never get the chance otherwise”. It’s not like any of these replacement refs have been discriminated against and this is their only shot. If they put in the years and training — like the locked out refs have and those working on it but won’t cross the strike line are doing now — they could get their chance.

This sounds a lot like the ridiculous complaints about how it was actually a bad thing for gender equality when 2 women were accepted into Augusta National.

Remember how one of the things the ref union doesn’t want is new referees? Guess what, that means it is the union, not the NFL that is preventing Thomas from being the first female ref.

Anyway, we have female NBA refs, right? And basketball is an intrinsically more difficult (I would suggest almost impossible) game to referee because of the squishy nature of the rules (one of the reasons I have trouble watching basketball). So, I think the replacement refs will not be as good, but not be so terrible, and will get better as the season progresses. The NFL probably has its door being beaten down with qualified referee applications, and that means that football referees are a commodity, and the union will lose this battle.

Not only do I have zero clue how on earth any of this sounds to you like “the ridiculous complaints about how it was actually a bad thing for gender equality when 2 women were accepted into Augusta National” (because even re-writing that is mind-numbing), I am unaware of any such “complaints”. What I do know is I kept on topic in this, and in continuing to doing so, would like to remind you that Thomas has already been selected as an NFL ref finalist and as such is locked out. You, personally, solely, can blame the union for that if you want. But the union wants her in, and since she is unwilling to cross the strike lines, I would venture a guess she wants in the union. As for your synopsis of the merits of NBA reffing vs. NFL reffing? To steal your word, it is squishy, at best. Thank you for commenting though. You helped reaffirm what I already felt about this whole mess of a matter.

It was a Forbes column, saying the Condoleezza Rice should reject the membership, basically out of Feminist pride in women not being included for so long.

Anyway, let me try it this way- one of the reasons the refs are not working is that the league wants to hire more officials, and younger ones, partially in order to slowly phase out the current, ever-aging officials, and the referee union is opposed to that. Thomas would be in that group of younger new hires.

Let me clarify about NBA vs. NFL officiating. NFL officials are probably the best of the major sports (though I can’t comment on hockey, which I don’t watch). But I give a bit of a pass to NBA officials because of the murky rules of basketball. When is a travel not a travel? How much contact is enough to be called on a man defending the guy with the ball? What about off-ball contact?

They have a LOT less to be watching than in a football game, and it moves MUCH more slowly, but you also have fewer officials doing it, and again, it is inherently subjective.

The NFL has done a great job of repeatedly clarifying its rules and adding points of emphasis. It has added instant replay to make sure things are done right. Moreover, they have a much larger crew, each with specific assignments. There are still squishy areas- just how late was that hit? Did he aim for the helmet, or did the ball-carrier duck his head? Did the corner back make a play for the ball, or was it interference? But these are finite occurrences- in basketball the squishy questions are pretty much constant over the course of the game.

I really don’t want to digress any further, but I would love to read this column you claim to have read on Forbes about Condi because I can’t find it. I will go comment there if it is as ridiculous as you say, and I suggest you do too (rather than here). To brush with a broad stroke and try to claim that what I am saying about the position Shannon Eastin and Sarah Thomas are in is the same as women being excluded from Augusta National speaks to your level of misunderstanding about women’s issues. I’ll say that if you think it’s ok for anyone to step on the toes of another person in their mutual pursuit of equality, than we are never going to agree. I don’t subscribe to that whether it’s a woman, man or child. If you think it’s ok to try to get ahead without putting in the work of the professionals ahead of you and taking short cuts to achieve a position you are not yet qualified for ahead of someone more qualified, again, we will never agree.

Lastly, while I’m not going to engage in a discussion about which league’s refs are the best or worst because it has no relevance to my discussion here, truth be told, maybe there is a list we can do on that. I’ll keep your comments here handy in case I want to use them.